The Indie-Black Friday, and Other Updates.

It’s very rare that I write about anything on here other than my art and it’s creation, so I’ll ease into it with pictures from the recent inaugural exhibition of The Society For Embroidered Work, at The Clerkenwell Gallery in London.

My piece A Benediction From The Old World made his public debut, amongst the best contemporary textiles artists working today. The Private View was absolutely packed and it was a brilliant show all round, and a win in the sadly continuing battle to legitimise embroidered art as Art.

My latest piece The Emancipator also made his debut at Brush Gallery in Brighton this week, where it will appear as part of the Elephant group show until December 24th.

The show is in aid of the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand, and 20% of all sales during the show goes to support the work they do there rescuing abused and neglected elephants.

I made a post on Instagram yesterday about Black Friday and the pressure we all feel to spend and ‘find deals’ this time of year. As a self employed, independent artist I feel the pressure just the same, and I certainly understand the attraction of a bargain.

But I am going to use this post, and this week on social media, to draw attention to all the work I have done this year to make my original artwork accessible to everyone. We all have a choice where we spend our money, and that has huge power. So I want to encourage anyone reading this to support living artists like me. I know it can feel like we are all constantly being barked at with advertisements, and I don’t want to add to the noise. But when you buy even just a single card from me, it literally helps me pay the bills and continue to raise awareness of the threats to the natural world, along with raising money for charities doing the real work to protect it.

This print of Benedict (as I call him), sold out in a couple of hours when I released the first batch on Instagram, so I have ordered a reprint and you can buy now to make sure you don’t miss out. Prints are a big investment for me as photographing my textured work is a job for professionals, but the quality of this is absolutely exceptional, and every stitch is visible.